Joy and concentration radiated from her while diligently doing what can only be described as a very important job. She didn’t know it but important jobs are scarce and she was lucky to have this one. Fortunately it didn’t matter because she did it for the pure delight she felt while helping tend the garden.

Her duties were somewhat ill defined but it consisted of a number of important tasks such as:

This was the scene I witnessed through our front window at our neighbors house across the street while resting in my chair after our latest trip to the hospital. I was amused and impressed at the patience and tolerance for their two year old daughter that our neighbor displayed but not surprised. They’re good neighbors and I suspect this will be one of many happy memories they will enjoy.

I was telling grandma Oddball about the scene unfolding before me and she had to leave the kitchen and witness the romping child herself. As we both watched in amusement I was remind of incidences involving our own children when they were young.

At one time we owned a struggling bookstore. Since we were starting the store on a shoestring budget we had to do all the store preparation ourselves. This necessitated taking our children (ages 6 and 9) along as we worked. Naturally they were eager to be helpful and often ‘helped” us in unexpected ways.

As we started preparing the retail space we had to first paint the walls. Our enthusiastic helpers thought this a great idea. As we listened to the discussion of how they might help visions of past “helpful” episodes raced through our minds but we had very little time to act. The paint cans was already opened, the drop cloths were in place and we had to finish painting that day.

That’s when grandma Oddball had a brilliant idea. Digging out a couple of my old shirts and some other old clothes she used them to dress each child in a makeshift smock. At the store’s rear was an unpainted storeroom that was not viewable by the public. Opening a small can of paint and giving each child a small brush we told them to paint whatever they wanted on the walls. The idea was to keep them busy and we could always paint over whatever was created later.

They had a marvelous time and spent the day creating one masterpiece after another until the all the walls in that storeroom were covered by the time we had painted the main retail space. Taking a break we inspected those masterpieces. That’s when we decided to just leave them alone and not paint over them. For some reason we felt better just looking at them.

Unfortunately our bookstore went broke and we had to move on to new challenges. Over the years a number of stores have come and gone in that space. Recently grandma Oddball had occasion to shop in the latest store’s occupant and happened to mention that we were the original occupants. This sparked an interesting conversation which included the question, “Do you know anything about those paintings in the storeroom?”

Amazingly our children’s paintings still were there after more than 30 years. Occupant after occupant has decided to leave them alone using the rationale that they were cute and made them feel good. Unbeknownst to us our children left a more lasting legacy that we did!

Tags: family, garden, Humor

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